On Review: Vengeance Essential Deep House

On Review: Vengeance Essential Deep House

Being a producer, I’m always on the lookout for the best samples. I am not shy from looking into sample libraries further genres as well. Vengeance Sound is one of my favorite sample producers, I just love the sound of their products. They have a texture and a feel unlike anyone else in the industry so even if they release a pack dedicated to a different genre than I produce, I’m always curious as to their contents.

In my case being a primarily House and Techno producer, I was really excited when I learned about this deep house sound pack. The second I saw it, I knew I had to purchase it immediately.

My biggest problem with most sample packs that I have purchased over the years is that I just am flat out not using them. There might be a sound or two that will catch my attention, but majority of the time they end up going to the unused folder very quickly.

My new approach to using samples is to create one track per pack entirely using only the samples within the pack. This lends itself well to the production; the sounds will gel together well as they’re all from a similar source.

For the current sound, I was producing at the time which was Modern Retro House, Vengeance Deep House Essentials Vol 1 fit like a glove.

Although I must say, flat out I was a bit disappointed with the kick drums. I have never really been a fan of any Vengeance kick drums for whatever reason, but everything else in the pack was a real winner for me.

I found the pre-delay claps incredibly useful. For adding a little bit of additional groove to my productions. They’re all labeled with how much offset there is, giving you an idea the type a lazy rhythm groove you can create.

These work well layered on the grid with claps and snares as well, giving that push-pull groove.

The snares also complemented the claps well. There’s an excellent mixture a vintage to modern here with plenty of snap. I was able to create many nice shuffle and swing grooves using the snares on the off beats. They were chunky and always did the trick.

There are quite a few cymbals in this collection, from open and closed hi-hats to rides and some crashes. The folders are laid out the standard way that all Vengeance packs are laid out. I think vengeance sample CDs have more hi-hats and any other. There’s also a decent selection of shakers and tambourines as well, perfect for adding to your house grooves. I also liked the crisp 909 style sound that some of the hi-hats had. A lot of them had that real saturated sound that lent its self nicely in house music productions.

Anyone that knows me, has heard any of my tracks on Beatport or Traxsource, or has watched any of my training products knows that I’m not shy about using a loop or two in my productions. I picture loops more like vitamins. I try to get most of my nutrition from programming my grooves, but I’m not afraid to add a loop to fill in some of the gaps and supplement where needed.

I found the loops in this pack particularly useful, as they were not overdone, plus all of the kick drum’s were missing. Making it easy to slot right into the track. Some of them did have claps that were a little loud for my taste, but hi-pass filtering those out made them useful. The hi-hat grooves here are the primary focus with the loops giving your house vibes that funky feel when needed.

The loops are divided into three main tempos that are ideal for house. I would suggest for any producer not to be shy about supplementing with the loops in their tracks from this pack.

The effects in this pack I found to be somewhat useful. Having a good selection of down lifters, and uplifters to add tension where needed. There’s also a few different effects added for good measure like hi-hat builds and chord twists. Although I never actually found myself using them. I do feel they could’ve added a few more impact effect samples as there are only 17 included here, but I guess they do have their designated effect sample packs for those types of sounds.

The percussion one shot section of the sample pack is one of the biggest I’ve ever seen. Coming in at almost 300 individual samples of every blip, block, bleep, cowbell, bongo, and who knows what else you can think of. It’s almost an overwhelming selection of percussion that you can tune in your tracks.

The special loops section is filled with a variety of acoustic guitar loops, saxophone riffs, and other various borderline construction kit loops that include leads and baselines with various synthesizers and elements.

I must say I was impressed with the acoustic guitar loops included. For someone who values a good melody, the player on this set was spectacular, the nuances in playing were done well, and the melodies were actually good for once. I could picture almost every one of those in a track that could do well, provided it was well produced.

The saxophone riffs were also excellently played and well recorded. Although I’m not personally as partial to the saxophone as I am to the guitar.

The synths and piano section is a great song starter area. As I stated above, a majority of them are multipart loops, meaning they will stack and layer properly together. This fills out the elements of your eight bar loop getting a track going faster.

The star of the show in this pack to me is the synths folder. Being someone who is a huge fan of one-shot synth and bass samples, this collection has the mother load of classic sounds. From donk synth plucks and piano stabs, to retro stabs and jungle reese bass, this folder has it all. Also in typical Vengeance fashion where everything is very well recorded and engineered, with a nice bit of sparkle on top of every single one of them.

I found this folder to be the most inspirational of them all. As swapping out samples in my melodies while I was working on them, it was hard to choose which ones I wanted to keep in the track when many of them would work so well. They also stacked well together when I would remove the lows from one to make room for the other.

So I guess this leads me to the bad. As usual, I was really underwhelmed with the kick drums available. They just don’t work well for me. Although, I sample most of my kick drums from other sources anyway. Also, there were no vocals in the pack, A signature staple of modern house music’s vocals is when they’re slowed down and chopped around in some way or another.

Vocals were absent from this entire pack. It’s not a deal breaker by any means for me, as I would rather have a dedicated pack for that anyway. With that said it would of be nice to have a phrase or two to work with.

At the time of purchasing Vengeance Essential Deep House, if I could’ve told myself that I would go on and produce four tracks with it exclusively, and get all 4 signed I would have been skeptical. Also no I don’t work for Vengeance, and I will receive no commission if I inspire anybody reading this to purchase that pack. I just really enjoyed it that much, and I hope you will too. It really helps glue my productions together with a nice vibe that works for a modern or retro sound.

Love or hate this pack? Have you used it in any of your productions? Let us know in the comments below.